Search:

More info on Filipino cuisine

Filipino cuisine: Map

Wikipedia article:

Map showing all locations mentioned on Wikipedia article:

Filipino cuisine is the
foods and methods of their preparation and eating found in the
Philippines. This style of cooking and the foods
associated with it have evolved over several centuries from its
Malayo-Polynesian origins to a mixed cuisine with many native,
Hispanic, Chinese, American, and other Asian influences adapted to indigenous
ingredients and the local palate.

Filipinos traditionally eat three main meals a day -
agahan (breakfast), tanghalían (lunch), and
hapunan (dinner) plus an afternoon snack called
meriénda (another variant is minandál or
minindál). Dishes range from the very simple, like a meal
of fried salted fish and rice, to the elaborate paellas and cocidos created for fiestas.

History and influences

Malayo-Polynesians during the pre-Hispanic era in the Philippines
prepared food by boiling, steaming, or roasting. This ranged from
the usual livestock such as kalabaw (water buffaloes), baka (cows), chickens and pigs to seafood from different kinds of fish, shrimps, prawns, crustaceans and
shellfish. There are a few places in the Philippines where the
broad range in their diet extended to monitor lizards, snakes
and locusts. Filipinos have been cultivating
rice, and corn, since 3200 BC from their arrival of the
Austronesian people from Southern China Yunnan Plateau and Taiwan,
when they settled in what is now the Philippines. They brought with
them rice cultivation and a lot of other various traditions that
are used in forms today. Pre-Hispanic trade with other Asian nations introduced a number of staples into
Philippine cuisine, most notably toyo
(soy sauce) and patis (fish sauce), as well as the method of stir-frying
and making savory soup bases.

Maja, made from coconut milk, sweet
milk, and creamed corn

The arrival of Spanish settlers brought with them chili peppers, tomato
sauces, corn, potatoes, and the method of sauteeing with garlic and onions, which found
their way into Philippine cuisine. Although chili peppers are
nowhere as widely used in Filipino cooking compared to much of
Southeast Asia, chili leaves are frequently used as a cooking
green, again distinct from the cooking of their neighbours. They
also used vinegar and spices in foods to preserve them due to lack
of refrigeration. Local adaptations of Spanish dishes then became
common, such as paella into its
Filipino version arroz de valenciana, chorizo
into its local version of longganisa (from Spanish
longaniza), and escabeche and adobo, which are connected to the Spanish dish
adobado, as well as Latin America and Mexico, which also
have adobo dishes.

During the nineteenth century, Chinese
food became a staple of the panciterias or noodle shops around the
country, although they were marketed with Spanish names. "Comida
China" (Chinese food) includes arroz
caldo (rice and chicken gruel) and morisqueta
tostada (an obsolete term for sinangag or fried rice) and chopsuey.

Today, Philippine cuisine continues to evolve as new techniques and
styles of cooking find their way into one of the most active
melting pots of Asia. The Philippines does not only possess its
traditional cuisine; popular international cuisines as well as
restaurant and fast food chains are also
available around the archipelago. Furthermore, the Chinese populace
(especially in Manila) is famous for establishing Chinese districts
where predominantly Chinese and Chinese-fusion food can be found.
These are especially prevalent in urban areas where large influxes
of Chinese expatriates are located.

Staples

As with most Asian countries, the staple food in the Philippines is
rice. It is most often steamed and served
during meals. Leftover rice is often fried with garlic and onions
to make sinangag, which is usually served at breakfast
together with a fried egg and cured meat or sausages. Rice is often
enjoyed with the sauce or broth from the main dishes. In some
regions, rice is mixed with salt, condensed milk, cocoa, or coffee.
Rice flour is used in making sweets, cakes and other pastries.
Other staples derived from crops include corn and bread.

Fruits are often used in cooking as well. Coconuts, coconut milk, coconut meat, tomatoes,
tomato sauce, and bananas are usually added to meals. Abundant
harvests of root crops occur all year round. Potatoes, carrots,
taro (gabi), cassava (kamoteng kahoy), purple yam
(ube), and sweet potato (kamote) are examples.
Kamote and a certain type of
plantain called saba can be
chopped, dusted with brown sugar, fried and skewered, yielding
kamote-cue and banana-cue which are popular
caramelized snacks.

Meat staples include chicken, pork, beef, and fish. Seafood is
popular as a result of the bodies of water surrounding the
archipelago. Popular catches include tilapia, catfish
(hito), milkfish
(bangus), grouper
(lapu-lapu), shrimp
(hipon), prawns (sugpo), mackerel (galunggong), swordfish, oysters
(talaba), mussels
(tahong), clams (halaan and
tulya), large and small crabs
(alimango and alimasag respectively), game fish, gindara or sablefish, tuna, cod,
blue marlin, and squid/cuttlefish (both
called pusit). Equally popular catches include seaweeds, abalone and
eel.

The most common way of serving fish is having it salted, pan fried
or deep fried, and eaten as a simple meal with rice and vegetables.
It may also be cooked in a sour broth of tomatoes or tamarind, prepared with vegetables to make
sinigang, simmered in vinegar and
peppers to make paksiw, or roasted over hot charcoal or
wood. Other preparations include escabeche (sweet and sour) or
relleno (deboned and stuffed). Fish can be preserved by
being smoked (tinapa) or sundried
(tuyo).

Cooking methods

The Tagalog words for popular
cooking methods and terms are listed below:

"Adobo/Inadobo" − cooked in soy
sauce, vinegar and garlic. It could also refer to just roasting
on a wok, with light oil, garlic and salt, as in "adobong mani"
(peanut adobo. The latter is done more for
snacks, while the former is more associated with viands.

"Torta/Tinorta/Patorta" - to cook with eggs in the
manner of an omelette.

"Totso/Totcho" - cooked with fermented black beans.
The name of both a cooking method and dish.

A typical meal

Filipino cuisine is distinguished by its bold combination of sweet,
sour and salty flavors, and in general most dishes are not heavily
spiced. While other Asian cuisines (e.g., Cantonese) may be known for a more subtle
delivery and presentation, Filipino palates prefer a sudden influx
of flavor. Filipino cuisine is often delivered in a single
presentation, giving the participant a simultaneous visual feast,
an aromatic bouquet, and a gustatory delight.

Counterpoint is also a feature in Philippine cuisine. This normally
comes in a pairing of something sweet with something salty, and
results in surprisingly pleasing combinations. Examples include:
champorado (a sweet cocoa rice
porridge), being paired with tuyo (salted, sun-dried
fish); dinuguan (a savory stew
made of pig's blood and innards), paired with puto (sweet, steamed rice cakes); unripe fruits
such as mangoes (which are only slightly
sweet but very sour), are eaten dipped in salt; the use of cheese (which is salty) in sweetcakes (such as
bibingka and puto), as
well as an ice cream flavoring.

Snacking is normal, a Filipino may eat five 'meals' in a day.
Dinner, while still the main meal, is smaller than other countries.
Usually, either breakfast or lunch is the largest meal.

Sinigang na baboy (Pork tamarind
soup)

Main dishes include sinigang
(pork, fish, or shrimp and vegetables in a sour usually tamarind broth), bulalo (beef soup –
commonly with marrow still in the beef bone – with
vegetables), kare-kare (oxtail and vegetables cooked in peanut sauce), crispy pata (deep fried
hog hoofs with hock sometimes included), mechado (pork cooked in tomato sauce),
pochero (beef or pork cooked in tomato sauce with bananas
and vegetables), kaldereta (beef or goat cooked in tomato
sauce), fried or grilled chicken/porkchops/fish/squid/cuttlefish.
Dinner may be accompanied by stir-fried vegetables, atchara (shredded and pickled papaya), bagoong (fish paste) or alamang
(shrimp paste). Desserts are usually made only for special
occasions. The most popular desserts include leche flan, buko
pandan (slivers of young coconut with cream and pandan flavor) or gulaman
(jello).

Some dishes rely on vinegar for flavoring. Adobo is popular not solely for its simplicity
and ease of preparation, but also for its ability to be stored for
days without spoiling, and even improve its flavor with a day or
two of storage. Tinapa is a
smoke-cured fish while tuyo, daing, and
dangit are corned, sun-dried fish popular because they can
last for weeks without spoiling, even without refrigeration.

Unlike many of their Asian counterparts Filipinos do not eat with
chopsticks. Due to western influence, food is often eaten using
utensils, e.g., forks, knives, spoons. But the primary pairing of
utensils used at a Filipino dining table is that of spoon and fork
not knife and fork. The traditional way of eating is with the
hands, especially dry dishes such as inihaw or
prito. The diner will take a bite of the main dish, then
eat rice pressed together with his fingers. This practice, known as
kamayan, is rarely seen in urbanized areas. However,
Filipinos tend to feel the spirit of kamayan when eating
amidst nature during out of town trips, beach vacations, and town
fiestas.

Combination dishes may include kankamtuy, a combination of
kanin (rice), kamatis (tomatoes) and
tuyo (dried fish), or silog --meat most often
served with sinangág (fried rice) and
itlog (egg) to be consumed. The three most commonly seen
silogs are tapsilog (having tapa as the meat
portion), tocilog (having tocino as the meat portion), and
longsilog (having longganisa as the meat portion). Other
silogs exist including hotsilog (with a hot dog), bangsilog (with bangus/milkfish), dangsilog (with danggit/rabbitfish), spamsilog (with
spam), adosilog (with adobo), chosilog (with chorizo), chiksilog (with chicken), cornsilog (with canned corned beef), and litsilog (with
lechon/litson). Pakaplog is a slang
term referring to a breakfast consisting of pan de sal, kape (coffee),
and itlog (egg).

Merienda

Puto in banana leaf liners

Merienda is an afternoon snack, similar to the concept of
afternoon tea. If the meal is taken close
to dinner, it is called merienda cena, and may be served
instead of dinner.

Filipinos have a number of options to take with their traditional
kape (coffee): bread (pan de sal, ensaymada (buttery sweet rolls with cheese),
and empanada (savory pastries stuffed with meat)). Cakes
made with sticky rice (kakanin) like kutsinta,
sapin-sapin, palitaw,
biko, suman, bibingka, and pitsi-pitsi are served,
or sweets such as hopia (pastries
similar to mooncakes filled with sweet bean
paste) and bibingka (rich desserts
made with sticky rice). Savory dishes might include pancit canton (stir-fried noodles),
palabok (rice noodles with a shrimp-based sauce),
tokwa't baboy (fried tofu
with boiled pork ears in a garlic-flavored soy sauce and vinegar
sauce), puto (steamed rice flour
cakes), and dinuguan (a spicy stew
made with pork blood).

Dim sum and dumplings brought over by the Fujianese people have been given a Filipino touch and are
often eaten for merienda. Also famous are the different
street foods that are sold, most of which are skewered on bamboo
sticks, such as squid balls, fish balls and others.

Pulutan

Pulutan (from the word "pulutin" which literally means
"something that is picked up") is a term roughly analogous to the
English term "finger food". It originally was a snack accompanied
with liquor or beer but has found its way into Philippine cuisine
as appetizers or, in some cases, main
dishes, as in the case of sisig.

Deep fried pulutan include chicharon (also spelled tsitsaron),
pork rinds that have been salted, dried,
then fried; chicharong bituka or chibab, pig intestines
that have been deep fried to a crisp; chicharong bulaklak
or chilak, similar to chicharong bituka it is
made from mesenteries of pig intestines
and has a bulaklak or flower appearance; and
chicharong manok or chink, chicken skin that has
been deep fried until crispy.

Some grilled foods include barbecue isaw, chicken or pig
intestines marinated and skewered; barbecue tenga, pig ears that
have been marinated and skewered; pork barbecue which is skewered
pork marinated in a usually sweet blend;
betamax, salted solidified pork or chicken blood which is
skewered; adidas which is grilled or sautéed
chicken feet. And there is sisig a
popular pulutan made from the pig's cheek skin, ears and
liver that is initially boiled, then grilled over charcoal and
afterwards minced and cooked with chopped onions, chillies, and
spices.

Smaller snacks such as mani (peanuts) are often sold boiled in the shell, salted,
spiced or flavored with garlic by street vendors in the
Philippines. Another snack is kropeck which is fish crackers.

Fiestas

Sapin-sapin, a Filipino rice-based delicacy, sprinkled with
latik -- latik is the reduction of coconut milk
until all of the liquid has evaporated

For festive occasions, Filipino women band together and prepare
more sophisticated dishes. Tables are often laden with expensive
and labor-intensive treats requiring hours of preparation.
Lechón, a whole roasted
suckling pig, takes center stage. Other dishes include
hamonado (honey-cured beef, pork or chicken),
relleno (stuffed chicken or milkfish), mechado,
afritada, kaldereta, pochero,
paella, arroz de
valenciana, morcon, embutido (referring to a
meatloaf dish, not a sausage as understood elsewhere), and
pancit canton. The table may also be
have various sweets and pastries such as leche flan, ube,
sapin-sapin, sorbetes (ice cream), and
gulaman (jello).

Christmas Eve, known as Noche
Buena, is the most important feast. During this evening,
the star of the table is the Christmas ham and
Edam cheese (queso de bola).
Supermarkets are laden with these treats during the Christmas
season and are popular giveaways by Filipino companies in addition
to red wine, brandy, groceries, or pastries.

Regional specialties

The Philippine islands are home to various ethnic groups resulting
in varied regional cuisine.

Pinakbet with shrimp

Ilocanos from the rugged Ilocos region boast of a diet heavy in boiled
or steamed vegetables and freshwater fish, but they are
particularly fond of dishes flavored with bagoong, fermented fish that is often
used instead of salt. Ilocanos often season
boiled vegetables with bagoong
monamon (fermented anchovy paste) to produce pinakbet. Local specialties include the soft
white larvae of ants and "jumping salad" of tiny live shrimp.

Due to its
mild, sub-tropical climate, Baguio, along with
the outlying mountainous regions, is renowned for its
produce. Temperate-zone fruits and vegetables (strawberry being a notable example), which would
otherwise wilt in lower regions, are grown here. It is also known
for a snack called sundot-kulangot which literally means
"poke the booger." It's actually a sticky kind of sweet made from
milled glutinous rice flour mixed with molasses, and served inside
pitugo shells, and with a stick to "poke" its sticky substance
with.

The town
of Calasiao in
Pangasinan is know for its puto, a type of steamed rice
cake.

Cainta in Rizal province,
east of Manila, is known
for its Filipino rice cakes and
puddings. These are usually topped with latik, a
mixture of coconut milk and brown sugar, reduced to a dry crumbly
texture. A more modern, and time saving alternative to
latik are coconut flakes toasted in a frying pan.

Antipolo, straddled mid-level in the mountainous regions of
the Philippine Sierra Madre, is a town known for its suman and
cashew products.

Laguna is known for buko pie (coconut pie) and
panutsa (molasses clustered
peanuts).

Cebu is known for its lechón. Lechon prepared "Cebu style",
also known as inasal in Visayan, is
characterized by a crispy outer skin and a moist juicy meat with a
unique taste given by a blend of spices. Cebu is also known for
sweets like dried mangoes and caramel
tarts.

Popular Filipino dishes

Desserts and snacks

Halo-halo

Filipinos cook a wide variety of sweet desserts and snacks. One
famous dessert is bibingka, a hot
rice cake optionally topped with a pat of
butter, slices of kesong puti (white cheese), itlog na maalat
(salted duck eggs), and sometimes grated coconut. There is also
glutinous rice sweets called biko made
with sugar, butter, and coconut milk. Another brown rice cake is kutsinta. Puto is
another well known example of sweet steamed rice cakes prepared in
many different sizes and colors. Sapin-sapin are three-layered, tri-colored
sweets made with rice flour, purple yam, and coconut milk with its
gelatinous appearance.

Halo-halo can be described as a
cold dessert made with shaved ice, milk and sugar with typical
ingredients including coconut, halaya (mashed purple yam),
caramel custard, plantains, jackfruit, red beans, tapioca and pinipig. Sorbetes is similar to ice cream but made
primarily with coconut milk instead of dairy.

A slice of sapin-sapin sold at a market in
California

Lumpia are spring rolls that can be
either fresh or fried. Fresh lumpia (lumpiang sariwa) is
usually made for fiestas or special occasions as it can be
labor-intensive to prepare, while one version of fried lumpia
(lumpiang prito), lumpiang shanghai is usually
filled with ground pork and a combination of vegetables, and served
with a sweet and sour dipping sauce. Other variations are filled
with minced pork and shrimp and accompanied by a vinegar-based
dipping sauce. Lumpia has been commercialized in frozen food form and though various
restaurants.

pitsi-pitsi

There are other Filipino desserts and snacks. As a dessert,
leche flan is a type of caramel
custard made with eggs and milk similar to the French creme caramel and Spanish flan; mamon
is a dense buttery sweet sponge cake; palitaw are rice patties covered with sesame
seeds, sugar, and coconut; pitsi-pitsi which are cassava patties coated with cheese or coconut; and
tibok-tibok is based on a carabao milk as a de leche
(similar to maja blanca). As a snack, binatog is created
with corn kernels with shredded coconut. Packaged snacks wrapped in
banana or palm leaves then steamed, suman are made from a sticky rice. Ice
candy made from juice or chocolate put it in a
freezer to freeze is another treat. It can be any kind of flavor
depending on the maker; chocolate and buko (coconut)
flavored ice candy are two of the most popular.

Street food

Filipinos have their own distinct range of street food. Some of these are skewered on
sticks in the manner of a kebab. One such
example is banana-cue which is a whole banana or plantain skewered
on a short thin bamboo stick, rolled in brown sugar, and fried.
Kamote-cue is a peeled sweet
potato skewered on a stick, covered in brown sugar and then
fried. Fishballs or squidballs are skewered on bamboo sticks then
dipped in a sweet or savory sauce to be commonly sold frozen in
markets and peddled by street vendors.

Turon, a kind of fried lumpia consisting of an eggroll or phyllo wrapper filled with plantain and jackfruit and
sprinkled with sugar can also be found sold in streets.

As a warm soupish like snack, taho is
made up of soft beancurd which is the
taho itself, dark caramel syrup called
arnibal, and tapioca pearls with
cold (dark syrup). The pearls used come in various sizes and
proportion and stand out. It been served by many street vendors who
often yell out "taho" in the neighborhood like Americans
who yell out hotdogs and peanuts in sporting events. Innovations on
it include additional flavouring such as chocolate or strawberry,
and even cold versions. Taho is
derived from the original Chinese
snack food known as douhua.

There is also iskrambol (from the English "to scramble"),
a cooler ice-based snack kind of like a sorbet, flavoured with a
combination of artificial flavourings and usually topped with
chocolate syrup. It is eaten by "scrambling" the contents or mixing
them, then drinking with a large straw.

Egg street foods include kwek-kwek that are soft boiled
quail eggs dipped in batter that is usually dyed orange then deep
fried. In contrast, tokneneng is larger but similar to
kwek-kwek in that it is made with chicken eggs. Another
Filipino egg snack is balut,
essentially a boiled pre-hatched poultry egg, usually duck or
chicken. These fertilized eggs are allowed to develop until the
embryo reaches a pre-determined size and are then boiled. There is
also another egg dish called penoy that is fertilized duck
eggs. Like taho, balut is advertised by street
hawkers calling out their product. Consuming balut by some
involves sucking out the juices.

Okoy also spelled as ukoy is another
batter-based, deep-fried street food in the Philippines. Along with
the batter, it normally includes bean sprouts and very small
shrimps, shells and all. It is commonly dipped in a combination of
vinegar and chilli.

Among other street foods are already mentioned pulutan
like isaw, seasoned hog or chicken
intestines; betamax, roasted dried chicken blood served
cut into and served as small cubes for which it received its name
in resemblance to a Betamax tape; and
proven, which is essentially
the proventriculus of a chicken, dipped in cornstarch, and
deep-fried. Then there is pinoy fries which are fries made
from sweet potatoes with the same
tenderness of french fries but a
somewhat rounder and blockier shape in contrast to the stringy
appearance of french fries.

Pastries

In a typical Filipino bakery, pandesal and ensaimada are often sold. Pandesal
came from the Spanish pan de sal (literally, bread of
salt) and is a ubiquitous breakfast fare, normally eaten with (and
sometimes even dipped in) coffee. It typically takes the form of a
bread roll, and is usually baked covered in bread crumbs. Contrary
to what its name implies, pandesal is not particularly salty as
very little salt is used in baking it. Soft, chewy pandesal is much
preferred to a crusty one, a holdover from the days when cheap,
low-grade flour was used to cut costs. Ensaimada, also spelled ensaymada
from the Spanish ensaimada, has been altered much to suit the
Philippine palate producing a pastry with a soft and chewy texture.
It can be made with a variety of fillings such as ube (purple yam)
and macapuno (a variety of coconut the meat of which is
often cut into strings, sweetened, preserved, and served in
desserts) and often topped with butter, sugar and shredded cheese.
Also commonly sold in Filipino bakeries is pan de coco a
sweet bread roll filled with shredded coconut mixed with molasses.
Putok, which literally means "explode", refers to a small
hard bread roll whose cratered surface is glazed with sugar.
Kababayan is a small sweet gong-shaped muffin that has a
moist consistency. Spanish bread refers to a rolled pastry
which looks like a croissant prior to being given a crescent shape
and has a filling consisting of sugar and butter.

There are also rolls like pianono which is a chiffon roll
flavored with different fillings. Brazo de mercedes, a
rolled cake or jelly roll, is made from a sheet of meringue rolled around a custard filling. Similar
to the previous dessert, it takes on a layered presentation instead
of being rolled and typically features caramelized sugar and nuts
for sans rival. Silvañas are oval shaped, large
cookie sized desserts, with a thin meringue on either side of a
buttercream filling and dusted with crumbed cookies. Not overly
sweet, they are rich, crisp, chewy, and buttery all at the same
time. Barquillos use sweet thin crunchy wafers rolled into
tubes that can be sold hollow or filled with polvoron (sweetened
and toasted flour mixed with ground nuts). Meringues are also present in the Philippines, due
to the Spanish influence, but they are called merengue –
with all the vowels pronounced.

Some Filipino pies, for example the egg pie is a mainstay in local
bakeries, serving as a type of pie with a very rich egg custard
filling. It is typically baked so that the exposed custard on top
is browned. The other pie, buko
pie, is made with a filling made from buko (young
coconut meat) and dairy. Mini pastries like turrones de
casuy are made up of cashew marzipan
wrapped with a wafer made to resemble a candy wrapper but take on a
miniature look of a pie in a size of about a quarter. There is also
napoleones – again with all the vowels pronounced – a
mille-feuille pastry stuffed with a
sweet milk-based filling.

There are hard pastries like biskotso a crunchy, sweet, twice-baked bread.
Another baked goody is sinipit
which is a sweet pastry covered in a crunchy sugar glaze, made to
resemble a length of rope. Similar to sinipit is a snack
eaten on roadsides, and colloquially called shingaling. It
is crunchy and hollow with a salty flavor.

For a softer treat there is mamon a chiffon-type cake
sprinkled with sugar named from a slang Spanish term for breast.
There's also crema de fruta which is an elaborate sponge
cake topped in succeeding layers of cream, custard, candied fruit,
and gelatine. Similar to a sponge cake is mamoncillo which
generally refers to slices taken from a large mamon cake,
but it is unrelated to the fruit of the
same name. Sandwich pastries like inipit are made with two
thin layers of chiffon sandwiching a filling of custard that is
topped with butter and sugar. Another mamon variant is
mamon tostada, basically mamoncillo toasted to a
crunchy texture.

Stuffed based foods include siomai similar to the Chinese
shaomai and siopao similar to the Chinese baozi but larger and steamed bunned. The filling is
often mixed with a sweet sauce made from soy sauce and sugar.
Buchi is another snack probably of Chinese origin.
Bite-sized, buchi is made of deep-fried dough balls (often
from rice flour) filled with a sweet mung bean paste, and coated on
the outside with sesame seeds, some variants have ube as the filling. There are also the many varieties of
the mooncake-like hopia, which come
in different shapes (from a flat, circular stuffed form, to cubes),
and have different textures (predominantly using flaky pastry, but
sometimes like the ones in mooncakes) and fillings. Empanada is a turnover-type pastry filled with
a savory-sweet meat filling. Typically made with ground meat and
raisins, it can be deep fried or baked.

Main courses

At home usually, several of these dishes are cooked daily by many
Filipino households. One widely cooked dish is adobo which pork or chicken (occasionally beef)
is stewed or braised in a sauce made from soy
sauce, vinegar, garlic, and peppercorns. It can also be
prepared "dry" by cooking out the liquid and concentrating the
flavor.

Kare-kare

There are several styles of stew dishes cooked by Filipinos. Some
well-known stews are kare-kare
and dinuguan. With
kare-kare, also known as "peanut stew," the oxtail or ox tripe is the main
ingredient that is stewed with vegetables in a peanut-based
preparation. It is typically served with bagoong
(fermented shrimp paste). With
dinuguan, it is created from pork
blood, entrails, and meat and sometimes seasoned with chili
peppers, usually siling
mahaba. Mechado can be
included in this list using pork cooked in tomato sauce, minced
garlic, and onions, but goat meat can be used instead which would
be then be turned into kaldereta.
Varieties using other meats such as dog
meat also exist. In afritada, the use pork or beef is
simmered into a tomato sauce, typically with peas and carrots and
of course potatoes in similar cut size to the pork. Allegedly
originating from the Rizal area, waknatoy is a dish similar to
afritada, kaldereta, and
mechado. It has either pork or beef
sirloin with potatoes, cut sausages, and has a tomato-based sauce
sweetened with pickles. Different vinegar-based stews using
milkfish, pork hocks, or even leftover lechon are called paksiw. Although paksiw is made using
the same ingredients as adobo, it is
prepared differently in that it is not stirred as it simmers,
resulting in a different flavor as the vinegar is cooked first.
Pochero, its name is derived from the Spanish cocido, is a sweeter stew that has beef and
banana or plantain slices simmered in tomato sauce.

For a dish with more vegetables there is dinengdeng a dish consisting of moringa leaves (malunggay) and slices of bittermelon, and pinakbet which is stewed in vegetables heavily
flavored with bagoong. In
balance to color, the traditional tinola has a strong chicken presence accompanied
by a ginger soup cooked with whole chicken pieces, green papaya slices with chili, spinach, or moringa leaves. The large chunks of the chicken in
this dish contrast to the small pieces found in chicken noodle soup.

Filipinos have their own styles of soups. In one recipe,
binacol is a warm chicken soup cooked with coconut water
and served with strips of coconut meat. In a well-known soup,
La Paz batchoy is garnished with
pork innards, crushed pork cracklings, chopped vegetables,
and topped with a raw egg. There is another dish with the same name
that uses misua, beef heart, kidneys and
intestines, but does not contain eggs or vegetables. In
mami, the noodle soup is made
from chicken, beef, pork, wonton dumplings, or intestines (called
laman-loob). It was first prepared by Ma Mon Luk. Filipinos have a modified version of
chicken noodle soup called
sotanghon, consisting of cellophane noodles, chicken, and
sometimes mushrooms. In another soup, sinigang is typically made with either pork,
beef, or seafood and made sour with tamarind or other suitable
ingredients. Some seafood variants can be made sour by the use of
guava fruit or miso.
Sinigang made from chicken is commonly referred to as
sinampalukan.

For noodle dishes there is pancit
and ispageti. Pancit can be
described as a dish primarily consisting of noodles, vegetables,
and slices of meat or shrimp with variations primarily
distinguished by the type of noodles used. Some pancit,
such as mami and La Paz-styled batchoy, are
noodle soups while the "dry" varieties are comparable to
chow mein in preparation. Then
there is spaghetti or ispageti in the local parlance that
is a modified version of spaghetti
bolognese, a simplified version of the Italian dish. It is
sometimes made with banana ketchup instead of tomato sauce,
sweetened with sugar and topped with hot dog slices.

There are several rice porridges that Filipino cooks create. One
popular dish is arroz caldo
which is a rice porridge cooked with chicken, ginger and sometimes
saffron, garnished with spring onions (chives), toasted garlic, and
coconut milk to make a type of gruel. Another
variant is goto which is an arroz caldo made with
ox tripe. There is also another much different
rice porridge called champorado
which is sweet and flavored with chocolate and often served at
breakfast paired with tuyo or daing.

Another rice based dish is arroz de valenciana which is a
Filipino variation of the Spanish paella named after the Spanish city Valencia. There is also kiampong a type of
fried rice topped with pork pieces, chives
and peanuts. It can be found in Chinese restaurants in
Binondo and Manila.

A type of seafood salad known as kinilaw is made up of raw
seafood such as fish or shrimp cooked only by steeping in local
vinegar, sometimes with coconut milk, onions, spices and other
local ingredients. It is comparable to the Peruvian ceviche.

Filipinos also eat tocino,
longganisa, and bistek. Tocino is
a sweetened cured meat either chicken or pork and is marinated and
cured for a number of days before being fried. Longganisa is a sweet or spicy
sausage, typically made from pork though
other meats can also be used, and are often colored red
traditionally through the use of the anatto
seed although artificial food coloring is also used to cut costs.
Bistek, also known as "Filipino beef
steak," consists of thinly sliced beef marinated in soy sauce and calamansi and then fried on a
skillet or griddle that is typically served with onions. In another
pork dish, crispy pata, pork knuckles
(the pata) are marinated in garlic flavored vinegar then deep fried
until crispy and golden brown, with other parts of the pork leg
prepared in the same way.

Lechon manok is the Filipino take on rotisserie chicken. Available in many
hole-in-the-wall stands or restaurant chains (Andok's, Baliwag,
Toto's, Sr. Pedro's, G.S. Pagtakhan's), it is typically a specially
seasoned chicken roasted over a charcoal flame served with "sarsa"
(sauce) made from mashed pork liver, starch, sugar, and
spices.

Celebratory food

Package of biko and pirurutong

In Filipino celebrations, often lechón serves as the centerpiece of the
dinner table. It is usually a whole roasted suckling pig, but
piglets (lechonillo, or lechon de leche) or
cattle calves (lechong baka) can also be prepared in place
to the popular adult pig. It is typically served with a
sarsa (sauce) made from mashed pork liver, starch, sugar
and spices or a variation that does not include pork liver.

More common in celebrations than in everyday home, lumpiang sariwa, sometimes
referred to as 'fresh lumpia', are fresh spring rolls that consists
of a soft crepe wrapped around a filling that can include strips of
kamote (sweet potato), jicama, bean sprouts, green beans,
cabbage, carrots and meat (often pork). It can be served warm or
cold and typically with a sweet peanut and garlic sauce.
Ukoy is shredded papaya combined with small shrimp (and
occasionally bean sprouts) and fried to make shrimp patties. It is
often eaten with vinegar seasoned with garlic, salt and pepper.
Both lumpiang sariwa and ukoy are often
accompanied together in Filipino parties. Lumpiang sariwa
has Chinese origins, having derived
from popiah.

Available mostly during the Christmas season and sold in front of
churches along with bibingka,
puto bumbong is a style of purple-yam flavored puto.

Side dishes and complements

Not eaten as the main course but rather
a side dish, the process of creating
itlog na pula involves duck eggs that have been cured in
brine or a mixture of clay-and-salt for a few weeks, providing for
its saltiness, and then later hard boiled with their shells to be
later dyed with red food coloring, hence its name, to distinguish
them from chicken eggs before they are sold over the shelves. There
is also another food called atchara
which is pickled papaya strips.

Other foods are used as food complements. One could use
nata de coco which is a chewy,
translucent, jelly-like food product produced by the bacterial
fermentation of coconut water to serve with pandesal. One could
also use kesong puti a soft white cheese made from
carabao's milk but cow's
milk is also used in most commercial variants for serving in a
sandwich. Yet another would be grated mature coconut
(niyog), which normally is served with sweet rice-based
desserts.

Exotic dishes

Some
exotic dishes in the Filipino diet are camaro which are
field crickets cooked in soy sauce, salt,
and vinegar as it is popular in Pampanga; papaitan which is goat or beef innards
stew flavored with bile that gives it a bitter (pait)
taste; Soup No.5
(Also spelled as "Soup #5") which is a soup made out of testicles
which can be found in restaurants in Ongpin St., Binondo, Manila; asocena or
dog meat popular in the Cordillera Administrative
Region; and pinikpikan
chicken where the chicken has been beaten to death to tenderize the meat and to infuse it with
blood. It is then burned in fire to remove its feathers then
boiled with salt and pork. The act of beating the chicken in
preparation of the dish apparently violates the Philippine Animal
Welfare Act 1998.

Filipino drinks and cocktails

The climate of the Philippines is characterized by having
relatively high temperature, high humidity and abundant rainfall
that make it a reason why chilled drinks are popular.

Alcoholic

There are a wide variety of alcoholic drinks in the diet. This
includes brandy, and its variations
such as Brandy-Iced Tea Powder (a popular cocktail
consisting of one or more liqueurs and iced
tea powder); and Brandy-Grape Juice Powder (same as
above but with grape juice powder). Other different alcoholic
beverages include rum as Tanduay is the local favorite. Another choice could
be serbesa which is a translation for beer. The most popular choices in restaurants and bars
are San Miguel Beer, Red Horse Beer and San Miguel Light.

Several gins, both local varieties like Ginebra San Miguel (as well as GSM Blue
and GSM Premium Gin) and the "London Dry" imported types like
Gilbey's, are consumed. Other variations
include Gin-Bulag (which literally
translates to "gin-blind," it is said that consuming amounts of it
will make one blind). Other people classifies "gin" with the shape
of the bottle. They call it "bilog" (for a circular bottle) and
"kwatro kantos" (literally means four corners, referring to a
bottle that is rectangular or square in shape). Variations of "gin"
can be in a mixture of "gin" and juice examples are:
Gin-Pineapple Juice Powder (any kind of gin mixed with
pineapple juice), Gin-Pomelo Juice
Powder (just like the former but mixed with pomelo juice
instead of pineapple), and Gin-Guy Juice Powder (any kind
of gin mixed with guyabano (also known as soursop) juice). Lambanog is a type of hard
liquor made from distilled coconut extract.

Tuba (or toddy) is a type of hard
liquor made from fresh drippings extracted from a cut young stem of
palm. The cutting of the palm stem usually done early in the
morning by a mananguete, a person whose profession
involves climbing palm trees and extracting the tuba to
supply to customers later in the day. The morning accumulated palm
juice or drippings from a cut stem is then harvested by noon then
brought to buyers then prepared for consumption. Sometimes this is
being done twice a day so that there are two harvests of tuba in a
day occurring first at noon-time and later in the late-afternoon.
Normally, tuba has to be consumed right after the
mananguete brings it over or it becomes too sour to be
consumed as a drink so that any remaining unconsumed tuba
in the day is being stored in jars for several days to become
palm vinegar. Additionally, tuba can be
distilled to produce lambanog, a
neutral liquor often noted for its relatively high alcohol
content.

Shakes

Some shakes that are included in a Filipino diet are fresh
mango shake consisting of ripe mangoes
blended with milk, ice, and sugar; fruit shakes similar to
milkshakes but only contain fruit or flavoring (usually containing
Evaporated or Condensed Milk)crushed ice, Evaporated or Condensed
Milk, and fruits like Strawberry (which is native in Baguio for its
cold climate), Melon, Papaya, Avocado, Watermelon, and the popular Mango to name a few but has rare fruits like Durian

Chilled drinks and cocktails

Other chilled drinks include gulaman at sago a flavored
iced-drink with agar gelatin and sago pearls with banana extract
is added to the accompanying syrup; fresh buko juice drink
from a young coconut where the coconut is
penetrated to allow straw into the membrane allowing a person to
drink its juice later opened afterwards to scrape and eat its
tender flesh, which a variation of this is made out of coconut
juice, scraped coconut flesh, sugar, and water; kalamansi
juice juiced Philippine limes sweetened with honey, syrup or
sugar; and other tropical fruit drinks that includes dalandan
(green mandarin), suha
(pomelo), piña (pineapple), banana, and
guyabano (soursop). Orange, apples, grapes, and mangoes are also
preferred.

A different class off diet involving the use of shaved ice includes
halo-halo which is a dessert
featuring a wide variety of sweet ingredients with shredded ice,
topped with sugar and milk; saba con yelo which is shaved
ice served with milk and minatamis na saging ripe
plantains chopped, and caramelized with brown sugar; and mais
con yelo which is shaved ice served with steamed corn kernels,
sugar, and milk.

Others

Teas include pandan iced tea made with pandan leaves and lemon grass, and
salabat, sometimes called ginger tea, brewed from ginger root. A particular coffee sold as a premium brewed
coffee from the cool mountains of Batangas is known as Kape
Barako. Another drink consumed is a warm chocolate
drink called tsokolate that is
traditionally made from dry powdery chocolate tablets called
Tablea.